It's a Fire
by Lila2
Summary: No one wants to be second best (post-ep for "Blood Ties")


Title:"It's a Fire"  
  
Author: Lila  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Spoiler: "Blood Ties"  
  
'Ship: Sarkneyish  
  
Length: one-shot post-ep  
  
Summary: No one wants to be second best  
  
Author's Note:  
  
For any questions about Sark's backstory, reference my fics "Memory" and "Oedipus Rising." Everything I write kind of relates to each other, so they should clear up any confusion about how Irina and Sark met and began their relationship. I really hope this story makes sense so please let me know if you think it flows okay because I'm wondering if it all fits together.   
  
As for "Elysium" readers, here goes…I have no internet at home and I'm not sure when I'm getting it back. Hopefully soon, so I can finish the chapter. Two, I have two papers left and I'm done with college and will have more time to devote to fanfic. Three, I've been out of town for most of April/March jobhunting and visiting friends, so I haven't had time to work on anything. Hopefully, when I'm done with everything, I'll have the new chapter up. I'm so sorry because I promised updates would come faster, but my life interfered and I haven't kept my promise. I'll try and do better!  
  
~ * ~  
  
"It's a fire  
  
These dreams they pass me by,   
  
The salvation I desire,  
  
Keeps getting me down"  
  
- "It's a Fire," Portishead  
  
~ * ~  
  
All his life, he'd been second best.  
  
He'd been seven when Irina found him and made him hers. And for seven months she'd been his, until the night she woke up sweating and screaming and alone, except for the little boy who thought she'd hung the moon. She'd held his hand so tight he'd thought she'd snap the fragile bones and hissed through parted lips until she came screaming into the world.   
  
"Give her to me," Irina had whispered after the baby had slid into his arms in a wave of blood and tears. "I want to hold my daughter." And he'd watched with tears in his eyes as she'd pressed a kiss to her new daughter's cheek and ran a tender hand over her matted dark hair. "She has his eyes, you know?" she murmured. "Both my girls have his eyes."  
  
"Who?" he'd asked, desperate to hold onto the connection, to the only stable person in his entire life.   
  
"Jack," she whispered, her eyes never leaving the baby's. "Go back to bed, Julian. We'll be all right now."  
  
He'd padded to the door, watching mother and daughter in the patch of moonlight. The baby was tiny, so little she'd fit neatly into his child's arms, and so brittle. He'd been so afraid of dropping her in those first moments, when she'd been slick with blood and other things he couldn't name, before he'd given her to Irina. And Irina…as soon as she'd heard that first anguished cry, the first sharp breath her new daughter took, she no longer needed her surrogate son. She'd lost one daughter, but gained another--she didn't need him to fill that hole in her heart, so she dismissed him, with barely more then a mumbled thanks, and gave all her love to her new daughter. She'd had barely looked at him from the moment he'd laid the baby in her arms and from that moment, everything changed.  
  
~ * ~  
  
When he was twelve he strapped a knife to his thigh and a gun to his chest and slid down the cold stone wall and disappeared into the frozen night. He met Ilya Krumlov in a Moscow brothel where a Ukranian girl with hollow eyes ran tired fingers through his fine curls and whispered in his ear. Her nails were chipped and rimmed with dirt and he could feel her stale breath against his cheek; he tried this best not to flinch in disgust. He knew Krumlov was testing him, wondering how a twelve-year-old boy would to such an open proposition. But it wasn't the girl's offer that bothered him, he had his own fifteen-year-old housemaid waiting in his bed, but that Krumlov thought he was so unimportant he would bring him to a brothel to conduct business. He worked for Irina Derevko, he was important, he deserved the finer things, not cheap vodka and terrified girls willing to anything for a ruble. He knew Krumlov didn't see it that way, he only saw him as boy too big for his britches, but he was going to prove himself. And this deal was just the start.  
  
Krumlov watched him with interest, his fingers tapping incessantly against the black leather case. "How old are you?" he asked, his eyes skimming over childlike cheeks rimmed with baby fat. "You don't even have a beard yet."  
  
He steeled his eyes and was thankful the darkness of the room hid the flush creeping up his neck. "Old enough to deliver what you asked. I can give you her location, if you have my money." He kept his face blank, his voice cold, and pretended the filth of the place didn't bother him. Cool, calm, professional, that was what he did best.  
  
Krumlov pushed the black leather case across the cracked wood and watched while he opened it. He ran his fingers through the crisp bills. "Five million American dollars. In cash. Just as you asked. Now, where is the Passenger?"  
  
Sark reached into is pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. "This is all the information you'll need. Make sure she's gone by sunrise." He grabbed the case and left the grime behind and slipped back into his room, where Talia ran soft hands over his chest and he washed away the dirt with her mouth.  
  
~ * ~  
  
He woke the next morning with a gun pressed to his temple and Irina's heavy weight pressed against his back. "Where is she," she hissed. "Where is Nadia?"  
  
"I don't know," he said, but she only pressed the gun hard enough to bruise. He could feel her breath in his ear, hot and fiery, and could imagine the anger burning in her eyes, coursing through her veins, that he could take away the one thing she valued most.  
  
"What did you do to my daughter?"   
  
"I don't know what you're talking about."  
  
She flipped him on his back, straddled his legs so he was pinned beneath her. "Don't lie to me, Julian. Where did you take her?"  
  
"I didn't," he insisted. "I don't know where she is. You know I've been warning you about security measures. You've been lax, Irina. Anyone could have broken in and taken her."  
  
"Yes," she said smugly. "But that person would have to know she was here in the first place. I'll ask you one more time. Where is she?"  
  
"And I'll tell you again, I don't know!"  
  
She looked deep into his blue eyes, ran her hand over his baby-soft cheek, the way she did with her daughter the night she was born. "What have I done to you?" she whispered, her eyes going weak with tears and grief. "What happened to the boy I once knew?"   
  
He could have answered, he could have explained that she killed that boy the day Nadia entered the world and took his place in her life. He could have reminded her that she was all he had in the world to love and she'd given that love to someone else. He could have told her he was tired of being second best and he had eliminated the competition. But instead, he took advantage of her vulnerability and flipped her, so his gawky body pressed her into the mattress. He might have just been twelve, but he was strong and used to the weight of a gun in his palm. He easily slipped it from her grip and pressed it to her temple.   
  
"For the last time," he said icily. "I don't know where Nadia is. And as soon as you stop trying to kill me, I'll help you find her."  
  
She glared up at him with fiery eyes, the passion back in her gaze. "So help me, Julian, if I find out you had anything to do with her disappearance…you'll wish you'd never met me."  
  
"Too late," he said and pulled the gun away. She got up and glared at him, the tenderness gone from her eyes.   
  
"I expect you downstairs in ten minutes to plan our strategy. I want her back within the week."  
  
He watched her leave, with a swish of black clad hips and long, dark hair, and pulled out his phone. "Where is he?" he demanded when Krumlov picked up, grumbling about the early hour. "What is her location?" he asked.  
  
Krumlov only had bad news. "My operatives are dead," he said angrily. "The CIA got to her first. I don't know where they've taken her. I want my money back."  
  
But he'd only laughed. "The money is mine. I fulfilled my part of the agreement. It's not my fault you weren't able to secure her." He'd hung up while Krumlov issued threats against his life and a week later he put a bullet in his brain while Irina met with Khasinau to determine William Vaughn's location. And afterwards, she'd slipped her hand in his and bought him a hot chocolate told him how sorry she was for her accusations. He'd only smiled and treasured her soft palm wrapped in his. Things hadn't gone has planned, but the result was the same: Nadia was gone.  
  
"I'm sorry for what I said," she said softly and blew on her coffee. "I shouldn't have accused you of Nadia's disappearance." She smiled coldly and took a sip. "I have William Vaughn's location. We leave tonight." She patted his hand and left a few rubles on the table and took him home.  
  
He wasn't second best anymore   
  
~ * ~  
  
For fifteen years he'd had everything he'd always wanted: power, control, Irina's devotion…at least until her other daughter entered his life.   
  
The first time he saw her he'd thought she was a ghost, Nadia all grown up and ready to destroy the man who'd sold her life for five million dollars. He'd watched the way her hair blew in the wind and met her dark eyes, feeling her hatred and smugness over several hundred yards of water. When he blinked she was gone, along with the reminder of his past and a deal he'd made when he was far too young to secure the future he'd always wanted. Afterwards, he'd gone home and checked his records and paid Nadia's handler three million dollars to keep her hidden, keep her safe, keep her away from the life he'd created for himself.  
  
But he never forgot the dark-eyed girl in the red bikini and the way she'd stared at him across the water, as if she could see inside him and all the things he'd worked so hard to keep hidden. Like memories of a bitter childhood in Belfast where there was never enough to eat and his mother sold her body to keep him clothed. Or when he was eight and Irina placed a gun in his hand and ordered him to shoot a man clutching a rosary between shaking fingers as he knelt before a shallow grave. Or when Talia turned on him at thirteen because she wanted a real man, not a boy, and he tied her up and beat her until she screamed. Or the ghosts of all the men he'd killed swimming before his eyes while he dreamed empty dreams alone at night. For the first time in his life he felt like someone was seeing all of him, not what he wanted everyone to see. He wondered if she wanted to see all that, what it would do to her if she could see all that, so he tried to push away thoughts of a girl with too-knowing eyes.  
  
He'd thought he'd never see her again…and then she'd captured him and let that bastard Sloane torture him…and ran her fingers through his hair at a Parisian nightclub…and stuck an ice pick in his thigh…and tried to kill him on a stairwell in Stuttgart.   
  
Not exactly the beginning of a beautiful relationship, if you could call it that at all.   
  
It was more like unwanted attraction between two people that should never have even met in the first place. She hated him, he resented her, but he could never forget that shared look so many years ago and the way it had made him search deep inside and admit everything was wrong. And despite herself, he knew she saw things inside him that she recognized inside herself, like darkness and pain. Even without the chemicals eating through her, he knew she would have agreed to Sloane's death because she hated him that much. Not that she'd ever admit it to herself, that she could order a man's death and feel nothing for it, but he saw it there, when their eyes locked and death approached with each second ticking by. They shared something, whether she would admit it or not.  
  
~ * ~  
  
He hadn't meant to become obsessed with her. Even when he wanted to hate her, when she popped back into Irina's life and threatened to steal the life he'd so carefully carved out for himself…but he couldn't, even when he tried.  
  
So instead, he hated Michael Vaughn.   
  
It was simple really, to hate the man she wanted more than him. Or rather, the man she could admit to wanting. It wasn't as if he imagined a life together with children and laughter and warmth. He wasn't interested in happy endings or forever promises. But he wanted her to admit there was something brewing between them, even if it was something they both detested.   
  
And he knew he was never going to get it.   
  
So instead he watched her carve a life for herself with her boyscout. Watched them play hockey and trivia and other boring things people trying to delude themselves do. Watched her do other things, and even that lacked a spark of originality.  
  
He remembered the night Allison had delivered the tape with a smirk on her face and a flush in her cheeks. "Happy viewing," she'd whispered in his ear. "Hope you find them more interesting than I did."  
  
He hadn't found it interesting. He'd found it boring and juvenile and completely lacking in creativity. He watched as Vaughn ran a hand under the hem of her shirt and imagined his own fingers sliding across her stomach, his tongue scraping against her neck, her legs wrapped around his waist as she arched up…too bad Vaughn's technique left a lot to the imagination. She deserved better, but she insisted on settling for the right choice, not the right man.  
  
So when Lauren came to him and proposed a set up, he did nothing to protest. "Your wish is my command," he'd murmured against the back of her palm, plotting the ways to make the arrangement worth his while. It felt good to f*ck Vaughn's wife, good to steal something of his, felt even better when she'd come to him with news of betrayal.  
  
"I want him to burn," she'd whispered when she'd discovered her boyscout deceived her. "I want him to suffer."  
  
"Not a problem," he'd whispered back.  
  
~ * ~  
  
He hadn't been satisfied until he'd had Vaughn tied up like a dog, dependent on his mercy. He'd picked up the tazer in one hand, walked around his victim like a hunter stalking his prey. He glanced at Vaughn, trying to control his fear as he awaited his fate, and let a smirk curve his lips.  
  
He remembered the stairwell in Stuttgart, when she'd glanced between the man who understood her and the man she thought she loved, and without hesitating, leveled a gun at his head. He'd had a split second to run for it before he felt the jerk of a bullet against his skin, while she fussed on about Vaughn below. And all awhile she didn't spare him a second glance and it only made him hate the boyscout more.   
  
It was time to do something about it.  
  
He looked into Vaughn's pained green eyes and smiled widely, bouncing the weight of the tazer in his hand. "And third, Mr. Vaughn," he smirked. "Is that I'm going to enjoy this far more than I should."  
  
He laughed as Vaughn's screams echoed through the room, smiled as his body shook with pain. All's fair in love and war, especially when the boyscout suffers.  
  
For a brief moment, he wasn't second best--and that was all that mattered.  
  
~ * ~  
  
So what do you think? 


End file.
